Discussion Papers 6, 7 and 8

Professor I.C. CHEESEMAN (Southhampton University)

Mr Whitby has I think made his statement from a financial standpoint rather than from the position of a resource which is obviously finite and which will be exhausted in a fairly short length of time. Is this a realistic position? The fuel price increase represents a greater challenge to the airlines than to any other major transport mode user.

Table 1 shows the balance sheets of major transport enterprises. Fuel as a percentage of the total costs given in the balance sheet for the various transport industries is only really significant in the case of air. For the other modes the cost of fuel as a percentage of the total bill cannot be regarded as a major driving force to produce energy economy when it is compared with the other component costs seen in Table 1.